As Time Goes By

by Dave Stewart

Last July, I put the bike in the car and headed to Nashville
for the 2002 USCF Elite National Road Race Championships with
Sweet Deborah. I wasn’t racing. I was on another mission.

Our business in Louisville was hectic and a planned lunch in
Nashville evaporated in a frenzy of work details for both
Deborah and me. When we finally settled into a turn-of-the-century
B&B, it was late afternoon. We barely had time to take a late
stroll down a shaded sidewalk on that southern summer evening
that would not relinquish its heat and go to supper.

The next morning, I awoke at daylight, pulled the bike out of
the trunk and rode across town to the criterium course. It was
already in the 80’s even with the early shards of light barely
piercing snow fencing and the empty officials’ stand. The quiet
course had one other person watching it. He was a bicycle
importer from South Carolina attending the Nationals looking
for business. We talked bikes for a while than I pushed off to
shower, shave and get back into street clothes.

My date was for brunch with the USCF at the host hotel well
south of town. Three of us talked over the last cups of morning
coffee in a modern dining room with white tablecloths and
starched napkins. Outside the hotel, team cars with a forest of
bikes on the racks and equipment trucks packed the parking lot.
Regular vacationers moved about between groups of people with
shaved legs wearing sponsors’ logos.

The deal we struck that July morning was for Louisville, Ky.,
to host the 2003 Masters National Road Race Championships. The
difference in that deal and most others of recent years was that
Louisville would have the races for two years. A third year
would be a possibility. The logic of learning the lessons the
first year and really hitting a fast pace the second was
inescapable. The support of the Greater Louisville Sports
Commission and the Louisville Bicycle Club, one of the oldest
and largest clubs in the country, impressed the USCF. All we had
to do was make it happen.

The work of that next year culminated a month ago with the
2003 Papa John’s USCF Masters Nationals Road Race Championships.
The week-long event was the fruit of the labor of roughly 200
volunteers and 50 paid staffing. Entities such as Papa John’s
Pizza, the LBC, Team Louisville, Team Louisville/UPS, Texas Road
House, Rapid Transit, 2WheelSports, the SIW, the Spoken Word,
the Greater Louisville Sports Commission, Metro Parks, Metro
Works, Metro Police, USA Cycling and a host of “non-attached”
volunteers made for a perfectly executed event. The Masters is
the most exciting, longest-lasting USCF national event. It caters
to the largest group of competitors of the National Championship
series. Louisville and all of us who pitched in made it happen.

On that last Saturday evening of the 2003 Masters, I stood
again on an empty race course. It was a long ways from the that
hot early morning in downtown Nashville at the 2002 Elite
Championships to the cool early evening breeze of Cherokee
Park in Louisville. This time, I was talking with the National
Events Manager of the USCF. He was tremendously pleased with the
way the week of racing had gone. He was already excited about the
2004 Masters. Then,he asked me if Louisville would consider
hosting the 2004 Elite National RR Championships. He stressed
that there’s an added element that goes with that event. The
2004 Elite Championships are also the Olympic Trials. The winners
of those races represent the USA in Athens.

We’ve come a long way in one year. The distance traveled has
been through the efforts of so many from our racing, cycling,
corporate and civic community. Louisville is on the map of
competitive cycling. We’re on the map because of each person who
took part in this exciting event. The credit and thanks belong to
each person who participated. It never would have happened
without each and every one of us.